God's Not Dead 2 - Love me or else!
So yes, Josh sure likes the Newsboys (and also Jesus, I guess maybe). They're on his shirts, on posters in his room, on crap conspicuously sticking out of his pockets, and worked into the fucking backstory of how he met his horrendously acted girlfriend. His girlfriend, btw, is a subchristian traitor who disapproves of his defense of God, which is to say she bizarrely outright bans him from trying. Why? Because THEIR WHOLE RELATIONSHIP IS AT STAKE! This will affect his GPA, which will affect his academic future, which will affect their future together some decades down the line. "Everything you do is about us! ... This is SERIOUS!" Presumably she also cuts his food for him and dresses him, which explains a bit. In fact, she is SO FREAKISHLY opposed to this that she dumps him for going ahead with it later in the movie (which I remind you, takes place over the course of three days) after being together for 6 years.
THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE.
His faith shaken and his life with his terrible controlling girlfriend in jeopardy, Josh walks into one of those... what do you call those God buildings that aren't Newsboys concerts? A church, right - a church. He goes to a vacant church for guidance, and our Boring Minister points him to Matthew 10:32-33...
"32 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."
Or to paraphrase, go fight atheists or God will cast you into the lake of fire. YOU. Yes, YOU IN THE AUDIENCE. YOUR OMNIPOTENT LORD NEEDS HELP OR HE WILL DESTROY YOU. (Remember that "free" gift of eternal salvation you get if just accept Jesus into your heart? Weeeeell, there's some fine print...) Btw, this scene establishes that there are 80 people in the class, and except for Josh ZERO of them follow Jesus, despite that some 3/4ths of Americans are Christian. Truly they are a persecuted minority, and so on. Also, Boring remarks that when you hear voices inside you, "that's the holy spirit talking to you. It's how he interacts with us, if we allow him to. All you have to do is decide if you're willing to listen." So... the next you get that urge to carry a hunting rifle to the top of a clock tower, listen to the LAWD!
MEANWHILE it's time for Liberal Bitch Queen's "ambush interview!" And oh, you're in for a treat: it's that beard guy from Duck Dynasty! He's on his way to church with his questionably dressed wife, when Liberal Bitch pounces, points her iPhone at them like a goddamn gun, and spews her hateful leftist gotcha-media at them. First she accuses the wife of being an anti-feminist baby machine which... the wife pretty much agrees with. Next, she MEAT IS MURDER MEAT IS MURDER MEAT IS MURDER!!! Which Duck Dynasty guy coolly rebuffs by pointing out that he thoroughly kills the shit out of whatever the hell he sees (FUCK YEAH!!), so it's not like they suffer too much. And his wife proudly states that she goes along with him wholeheartedly "on the things that matter" (i.e. adding lead to ducks). At this point Liberal is utterly stunned and flatfooted, but she has one last arrow in her quiver of SIN. "So what do you say to people who are OFFENDED because you OPENLY PRAY TO JESUS in every episode?!" Aaaaand no, time out. Let me stop you right there. That is not what everyone got mad at your show about. People got mad because of this shit:
What, in your mind, is sinful?
“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers-they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”
and also:
Phil On Growing Up in Pre-Civil-Rights-Era Louisiana
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’-not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
So just stop the persecution complex. Nobody gives a shit that you like to pray. They do care if you're a gay basher or think "pre-entitlement" blacks had it made in the shade. Duck Dynasty guy goes on to say "if they don't want to watch the show they can turn the channel"... which is funny because the boycott of the show was something the Christian Right was all up in arms about as an attack on freedom or something. But whatever. LIBERAL BITCH QUEEN DEFEATED.
And right here is an awesome example of how this movie handles people who disparage Christ or Duck Dynasty, because GOD GIVES HER TERMINAL CANCER as punishment for her duckless liberal sins! Well, to be fair the movie doesn't come right out and say that God gave her cancer, but it's made pretty clear that the hand of God is puppeteering all the events of the movie because "God has you right where He wants you," right down to hi-lariously preventing every car that Boring Minister gets his hands on from starting just so that he'll be in town to watch Kevin Sorbo when... well, we'll get to that. Anyway: oh no cancer. Liberal Bitch gradually has a mental breakdown as she comes to terms with being smoten, throwing her computer across the room, collapsing on the floor in tears, and clawing at her face while screaming in anguish which... I'm not sure if the audience is supposed to feel sympathy for, or take some kind of dark satisfaction in. When she reveals to Dean Cain that she has cancer during their dinner date, a just... truly magnificent scene unfolds:
"I... think I have cancer... Did you hear me? Did you hear what I just said? I have cancer."
"This couldn't wait until tomorrow?"
"What? How can you say that to me?! I thought you loved me!"
"I do. But you're changing our agreement. You're breaking our deal."
"You make it sound like a contract negotiation!"
"Well what did you think this was?"
"I thought it was love!"
"Grow up, Amy. Love is the most overused word in the English language. It's what we say when we want something, when we need something, and you're as guilty of it as anybody. We had fun. You were my young, hot girlfriend with a sheet job. I was your upwardly mobile, charming, successful boyfriend. And we were together because we each got something out of the relationship that we wanted. And it was good! It was - actually it was great! And now it's over." [I like to think that this is exactly how Newt Gingrich filed for divorce.]
Because may I remind you, non-Christians are children of the Devil. Speaking of which, later on Dean Cain gets his own comeuppance when he visits Alzheimer's Chicken Lady, who is his mother, and realizes he is a dick. But then why is his life just so... fucking... awesome, he asks her, while God gave HER Alzheimer's?? She is possessed by spirits just long enough to answer: it's Satan. See, Satan gives some people a "comfy jail cell" with the door wide open. But then, one day, the door slams shuts and they're trapped in comfort... FOREVER! Well... it sounds more ominous when she says it.
Alright, let me just wrap up the side-character stories right now so we don't have to keep schizophrenically jumping back and forth like this damn movie.
1) The Asian Android Stereotype, who is a student in the same class as "Mr. Josh" (as he calls him, seriously), is slowly having its icy, communist circuits melted by Mr. Josh's superior American logic. He contacts his SRS BSNSman manufacturer father (who is the CEO of circling the block in a limo 100% of the time, or something) to tell him "it appears that his arguments are correct" (beep boop) and that he therefore calculates that he will turn over his soul to this "God" character he speaks of, failing to understand that robots and Asians do not have souls. (Which being Asian myself, I can confirm. Beep boop.) His father forbids this however, because that would reflect negatively on their family's honor in the communist party or some bullshit. But he does it anyway and lives neutrally ever after. Or possibly his father cuts off his tuition and he lives out the rest of his warranty in a gutter consuming rat parts from the dumpster behind McDonalds. Johnny Five... still alive...
2) Self-Hating Muslim Girl gets approached by a strange girl while she's tying up her hijab who declares "you're beautiful. I wish you didn't have to do that," in a random, weirdly awkward moment that causes me to wonder if the movie is transitioning into Blue is the Warmest Color. But potential lesbianism is spoiled by Oppressive Muslim Father who grills her about who she was talking to. To the film's almost-credit, he is portrayed as a sympathetic parent who is like a reverse-Christian just looking out for his daughter's welfare... for now. Later, we watch her stealing herself away in her room and locking the doors to surreptitiously look at blue-haired lady porn- actually no not really, for it is something FAR WORSE: she's listening to a podcast of Franklin Graham talk about Jesus. But when her little brother breaks into her room and discovers the filthy Graham word-porn he snitches on her to their father who - and I swear this really happens - busts the door down and FUCKING BEATS THE CHRIST OUT OF HER in between gasps of "No, papa! Jesus is my lord and savior he died for meeeeee!" He physically throws her out of the house and wraps his goddamn hands around her neck holy shit about to choke her to fucking death, but instead goes inside to cry. She wanders the streets homeless until ending up at Boring's church where he gives her some bible quotes, so I guess we're left to assume everything worked out for her from then on. And we'll barely ever see her again.
First!
Part 2 - Love me or else!
Part 3 - Philosophical Kombat!
Part 4 - Deux ex machina!